Giving up on Work e-mail - Status Report on Week 47 to 49 (On a Steady Pace)

Once again, I am on the move! This time on another plane from Raleigh / Durham (RDU) to Atlanta (ATL) and from there on to Orlando (MCO), as I am on my way to attend and participate at the IBM event Lotusphere 2009. This entry will probably get posted when I get to the hotel, but I thought, while I am on the last flight, to eventually put together a quick blog post sharing some further updates on the progress report on my quest to giving up e-mail at work, specially now that I have transitioned into IBM Spain and I guess plenty of folks are curious to find out how things are going. So here it goes. The progress report from weeks 47 to 49:

As you would be able to see, while entering 2009, things seemed to start getting busier going from those lovely 10 e-mails for the entire week, right after New Year, to the usual and regular a bit over 30 e-mails per week, in this case, 35 and 32 for weeks 48 and 49. But this time around for a couple of specific reasons, which, in my opinion, are just temporary and don't think they would last much longer:

HR e-mails: Yes, that's right. On week 48 most of the e-mails that came through had to do with the local IBM HR department in Spain getting me up to speed with all of the stuff I need to know for my new contract, as well, as notifications from the various IDs I would be needing within the new organisation, so you notice how Thursday, for instance, was a rather heavy day from that perspective. But now that I am all set up, and that influx of incoming e-mails from HR is gone!

I guess that's one of the areas where organisations could learn a thing or two about communicating those news items without having to resort to e-mail, but then again, most of the stuff could be classified as private, i.e. 1:1, so pretty all right with that, as that's the only instance of e-mails I still process in my inbox. I suppose I wouldn't want my IDs and password flying around all over the place out there, right?

Having to maintain two inboxes: Mainly, for week 49, things changed from HR related e-mails to the ones coming not only from one inbox, but two! (The Dutch ID I still had and the Spanish one that has just been issued to me). So the count of e-mails for that particular week is from two inboxes, so if I split it up, I suppose the total number would have been 16, which I guess is not too bad, considering the time of the year. So things are starting to look up again for that new challenge I set up towards the end of last year of trying to go under the 20 e-mails a week. Getting there, indeed! :-)

Finally, typically, by now, after I have commented on the various weekly status reports, I would go ahead and share with you folks an interesting link or two, relevant to the topic of re-purposing e-mail and which I would consider worth while mentioning. However, this time around is going to be different.

As you all know, I will be in Orlando for the rest of the week, participating in a number of various activities, mainly around the area of covering "Social Software in Action" while at Lotusphere 2009, and if you had a chance to check out the activities I will be involved with the rest of my team, you will know by now how we are going to be hosting a booth on that same topic I mentioned above, as well as an unsession where, in a very informal way, and over the course of one hour, I will be sharing some further insights on what my experiences have been all along on my quest of giving up e-mail.

Thus, from here I would want to invite you all to drop by the booth during the course of the week and get the inside out of the story, specially, if I am there ;-) or to come to the unsession on Tuesday. But not to worry, if you are not able to come along, I will try to record the audio of the informal conversation and then share it online for all of you folks out there to check it out, as well as invite you to come over here and share your feedback on how things are going and what will be happening in 2009! Exciting times, indeed!

Let Lotusphere begin!

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent my employers' positions, strategies, or opinions - Luis Suarez

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